


Crossing The Horizon

by taichara



Category: Saint Seiya, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 22:27:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7951579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So many things have finally fallen into place in Shiro's life; all he needed to do was die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossing The Horizon

_So this is it ..._

"It" was not especially comforting, or even recognizable. In desperate flight from Zarkon and the Galra forces, Black had raced through a wormhole spiralling out of control -- they all had, Lions, Castle, everyone -- and the team was separated, thrown who only knew where across the galaxy. Now Black was crumpled on the surface of some unknown planetoid, slumped on its side, while a feeble red dwarf flickered in the distance. 

There were no answers to Shiro's attempts to hail the others, which meant that once Black ran out of power, it was all over.

Not that it mattered. Shiro, makeshift pressure pad clamped to his flank, knew he'd die of blood loss before Black's systems failed -- or else whatever toxin or drug or _curse_ that tainted Haggar's claws would end him.

_... Going to be the first option, but I bet she'd love the second._

He slumped in his seat, leaving a scarlet slick tinged sickly violet striped down the chair back. His vision was already getting hazy; blood loss, poison, impending death ...?

Did it even matter?

_... Sorry, guys. I failed ..._

Haziness changed to a fuzzy blackness creeping in at the edge of vision. The pain began to ease, false comfort as death moved in to claim him, and a soft roaring filled his ears like the beating of wings.

A shadow fell over him. Someone else was in Black's cockpit, standing over him. Through the rushing darkness Shiro registered a deeper, glittering darkness -- body armour? wings? -- and hair pale as ice, as pale as death ... 

_what ..._

_weird hallucination ..._

"Look at you. Look how close you've come to fleeing. We can't have that.  
"Now, look at _me_."

The voice -- low, amused, purring almost -- registered in his head as much as in his ears; and somehow, despite the crimson staining his seat, despite the lassitude flooding over him, Shiro found himself lifting his head slowly to meet the stranger's eyes.

Eyes like a cat, like a demon. Golden eyes that devoured him whole, watching him with wicked amusement through that fall of colourless hair. 

And he _knew_ \--

"... Gryphon ..."

Soft chuckling in his ear as his helmet was suddenly yanked free by pale hands gauntleted in glittering black. A clawed hand came to rest on his scalp, soothingly cool.

"Excellent. And you are, Shiro --?"

_... how does he know ..._

But the words, the _knowledge_ came effortlessly, before he realized what he was whispering through blood-flecked lips.

"... Aker. Aker Shiro ...  
"Aker Shiro ... Star of the Boundary."

The stranger -- no, his commander, his _true_ commander -- straightened, his armour chiming like death bells, the wings shifting in an unseen wind. 

But that cool touch remained in place. The golden eyes gleamed.

"We've been waiting, Shiro. Shall we go?"

-*-

_What just happened._

One heartbeat ago, he'd been bleeding out in his Lion's cockpit. The next --

The next heartbeat later, Shiro was standing in a soaring-ceilinged chamber, half cathedral and half royal court. 

The vault above was lost into the darkness, struts like ribs carved from the living black stone; all around him was black and grey and bone-ivory, wrought iron ornaments and lamps of flickering pale blue flame. Baroque, eerily still ... and all around, towards the walls, thronged the fluttering, tittering shades of the dead. 

Beneath his feet, crimson puddled on white velvet crushed by heavy treads. But he was alive, no longer bleeding.

_Why is this so familiar?_

Shiro risked a second glance at his surroundings. Behind lay massive double doors, bound in iron; ahead of him --

\-- ahead sat a throne of iron and black adamant. Bone lilies and rampant beasts twisted and coiled, frozen in iron and adamant and ghost-flame. And on that throne sat Gryphon Lord Minos, who watched Shiro's every motion with eyes like golden ice. 

The First Judge looked expectant, waiting. Shiro knew why. He looked down at himself; at the blood-stained uniform of a Paladin, and the cold metal arm of Galra alloy that hung limp at his side, then back to his waiting lord.

Yes. His lord, his commanding officer, the First Judge of Hell.

"I don't have my Surplice. It's the bionics, isn't it? It's interfering with Aker."

"Exactly so."

Minos poured a draft of blood wine, sipped it once, gestured for Shiro to come and take the delicate glass.

"Now, what shall we do about it? These modifications are always such an annoyance, but you _could_ keep that, if you know what to purge its taint with. Do you remember, Aker? 

"Tell me, and you remain. There is no Holy War; we do not require your incarnation so desperately as to foster weakness in our ranks. But my word is all that you need beyond your own memory. Think."

Slowly Shiro padded the length of the snowy velvet, stepped up onto the dais -- feeling greatly daring -- and accepted the offered draught with his good hand. He stared into the clinging crimson of the contents, searching through the clearing haze in his mind. If Gryphon Minos said that he could redeem himself, purge the Galra taint and resume his place amongst the Demon Stars ...

_What do I need to do?_

_... Soulcutter._

Thought and action were simultaneous. The jolt tore through Shiro's core -- summoned up from a well of power he'd forgotten he had (or maybe this life never did, until now) -- and left him shaking with aftershocks from turning his own purging attack on himself ...

... But the velvet of the dais was splattered with, not blood, but the violet remnants of tainted Galra quintessence. He felt a cleansing burning in his veins, along his nerves where the graft planted its hooks, a burning that fed into the alien alloy and brought deadly new life to it.

That wasn't important. What _was_ important was Aker.

In the next heartbeat Shiro was encased in glittering adamant, black as the abyss. Heavy plating guarded chest, torso, spine; an articulated shell of blackest hell-diamond, twin lion's heads snarling from his shoulders. He flexed his hands, his _right_ hand, testing his claws.

With the other he raised the drought to his lips, and tasted copper and iron sweet on his tongue.

-*-

From the moment Aker accepted him once more, Shiro's existence became a blur of training and rediscovery.

There was so much he needed to reacquaint himself with: the functioning of Erebos and the thousand thousand Laws that governed the judgement -- and the swift disposal -- of the dead and the damned; the intricate bureaucracy that he and his fellow Spectres maintained to keep Erebos orderly despite the unending flow of souls from uncountable worlds; the sharp reminder of the Holy War and its inevitability. 

He relearned, or remembered, his own spirit-flensing, bone crushing modes of combat, reawakening the core of his cosmo with a vengeance: Soulcutter, his fundamental; the Skin-Flaying Talons; Guardian Fatali; Bleeding Horizon; the Black Earth Hammer ... Sparring with Lykaeon Phlegyas, with Alraune Queen and Basilisk Sylphid and the rest of his dire companions, Shiro felt his blood sing in a way it never had before in this brief life. 

So far as the Holy War was concerned, he was grateful for having incarnated between cycles. A beast of the borders, the call to war on the scale that Hades mustered was uncomfortable; and yet, now he knew -- he knew _intimately_ \-- just what depravity could fuel the Unseen One's disgust for mortal lives. The sheer scale of the Galra hubris left nothing to quibble over. Hades _was_ just in his condemnation.

And yet.

_I know there are good people. I know. And I ..._

-*-

"I have to go back."

Once more Shiro stood on soft velvets while a court of shades watched his every move. But this time, things were different; he stood armoured and proud, eyes glinting with a sheen of crimson, and this time he stood before three thrones, not one. 

The First Judge sat flanked by his brothers. On his right, Second Judge Wyvern Rhadamanthys glowered at Shiro from under savage brows; on his left, a faint and secretive smile played across the dusky features of the Third Judge, Garuda Aiakos. Gryphon's wings chimed ominously as Minos leaned forward, claws closed lightly around the armrests of his throne, pinning his subordinate where he stood with his unblinking gaze.

"You have made your plea, Aker Shiro. Let me summarize: You wish to return to the living world. You wish to rejoin your living comrades, despite having fully awakened. You wish to 'pilot' the spirit machine you call the Black Lion -- the same machine I retrieved you from -- against the Galra Empire.

"You wish to return to the Red Lion pilot. 'Keith', I believe his name is. He has an interesting record for a mortal, that one."

Only sheer force of will and remembered centuries of expected behaviour while in petition kept Shiro's shock from showing on his face, but even that didn't keep the Second Judge from chuckling at his reaction.

"Did you think none of us would notice, Shiro? Minos, I think we should finish this simply. There's an uprising in Maladomini that needs dealing with."

If Minos had a response for his youngest brother, it remained private between them; his recital resumed as if nothing had happened. The golden eyes bored into his subordinate's, and Shiro hardly dared to breathe --

"Our Unseen King grants that request. There is no Holy War."

Shiro startled; Minos shook his head, and Rhadamanthys stood up from his throne, wings scissoring with the ring of angry adamant, jointed tail of his Surplice lashing.

"Don't celebrate, Star of Boundaries. Your release comes with a condition attached. That said,"

\-- the Second Judge's sudden smile was predatory --

"We suspect you'll find little difficulty with it. These are your directives: decapitate the Galra machine and deliver their souls to us."

Aiakos' chuckle drifted through the court.

"We could hardly decide which is the greater offense at this stage, Zarkon cheating our King of his due for this long, or Haggar daring to think she could twist a Spectre into a puppet of their pitiful 'empire'. 

"Regardless, send our regards when you tear out their hearts, won't you?"

-*-

Days, weeks of despair cloaked the Castle of Lions like a tattered pall. Slowly, painfully, Allura gathered her Paladins to her, scouring across space to find them -- and in the end had found only four pairs, and Black, crumpled and inert on a distant planetoid, cockpit stained with blood. Shiro's body was never found, and with sinking heart the team declared him dead, Keith raging all the while ...

Which meant they were not remotely prepared for the sudden surge of unknown energies in the Paladin's common room, and even less prepared for who stepped through the ghostflame: Shiro, pale and sharp of cheekbone, but alive. Keith rocketed across the floor before the rest had time to down weapons, clouting Shiro on the shoulder and pounding on his chest in helpless, relieved fury until Shiro clamped him in a bearhug to slow him down. That was the cue for the others to crowd in, tearful and laughing and babbling all at once.

It was Allura who noticed the changes -- the glittering black sheen to Shiro's cyberarm, the strange red flicker of eyeshine when he turned his head, a subtle difference in posture and the _feel_ of the man -- but set it aside while Shiro squashed Keith close, ruffled Pidge's hair, almost instantly had to cut off another one of Lance's off-colour comments with a long-suffering sigh ...

It all seemed normal. He was already promising -- looking over his fellow Paladin's heads to meet her questioning gaze -- to explain.

She couldn't help but suspect this was going to be quite the 'explanation'.

-*-

_There it is._

_I know you're in there, Haggar. I can feel you from here, witch, you and Zarkon hiding in your fortress like frightened rats._

Shiro long since lost track of how many Galra he'd sent screaming to Erebos by this point. It wasn't really all that important; they were just cogs in the machine, and he tried to at least be quick about his work.

Which wasn't to say that part of him didn't _enjoy_ his work.

So much made sense, now. His survival in the arena. His deserved reputation for blood in combat. Making it through the torments and experiments despite everything the Druids inflicted on him. They were trying to wake up a part of him he didn't consciously know about.

_But it's my choice how I play that role. Thank you, Hades, for agreeing with me._

Being death and a bringer of death didn't mean he couldn't value life.

Another two Galra fighters went down under Black's claws, gleaming with Black Earth Hammer's chthonic energies, and Shiro broke into a feral grin.

_Oh, yes, we're coming for you, Zarkon. You have a lot to answer for._

_And it's my claws that're going to pull those answers out to be judged._


End file.
